If England win

The bid team

If England is chosen by a majority of the 22 Fifa executive committee members left standing after corruption allegations, the FA's bid team will argue that every means employed in the chase justified the end. Led by the chief executive Andy Anson, chief of staff Simon Greenberg and international president David Dein, they will be celebrated for delivering the first World Cup finals for 52 years. Euphoria will shower the prime minister David Cameron, Prince William and David Beckham with a burnish to their image. The bid team will be much less likely to face critical questions about their tactics, from the personal lobbying of individual executive committee members to this week's undignified attack on BBC Panorama.

Access to matches

Fans' dreams of a World Cup at home will lead rapidly to a focus on how affordable tickets will be for ordinary people who have been encouraged throughout to "back the bid". England's central selling point to Fifa to Fifa has been to make huge money, with an explicit promise that more than one million tickets will be priced at an average US$95 (about £60). At the same time, the bid has made a virtue of social and ethnic diversity, so the FA will come under pressure not to price out all but the middle-aged and wealthy.

Stadiums

The bid is based on the argument that the stadiums, transport and infrastructure are mostly ready now, but away from the major football cities this is not quite so. The 12 provisionally selected venues can be whittled down to eight by Fifa, and there are questions over whether viable, modern 40,000-seat stadiums can be built in the cities of Milton Keynes, Plymouth and Nottingham, and whether Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough can be got up to standard.

The England team

There will soon be worries about how England will perform against the world's great football nations on home turf. By 2018 last summer's flops will have retired, the next wave fielded in last month's defeat to France has yet to convince, so the FA will pray that the under-17 players who won this year's European Championship will come through. There will be a renewed argument that Premier League clubs should give more first-team opportunities to young English players.

Reform of the FA

The World Cup will have been claimed by an FA whose chairman, Lord Triesman, was cast out after a Mail on Sunday sting, and with an acting chairman, Roger Burden, so far invisible to the football public. Having a World Cup to organise will concentrate the authorities' and government's minds on the structure and leadership of the governing body. Some believe a World Cup will help reformers to argue for more FA independence, while others fear the glory factor will enable the organisation to paper over its faults.

Dealing with Fifa

The England bid and prime minister may have made themselves hostages to fortune by evading, and in the bid team's case attacking, Panorama's allegations that three members of Fifa's executive committee took bribes. Hosting will bring Fifa much closer to the British public and media. Despite Sepp Blatter's insistence this week that "the case is closed", the corruption questions have not been answered. As the reality of meeting Fifa's demands, including the tax-free status,and servicing its executive committee members, becomes clearer, scrutiny will deepen. Seven and a half years is a long time for David Cameron to avoid the question about whether England should be so eagerly servicing an organisation that stands accused of taking $100m in bribes.

If England lose

The bid team

Critical questions will be asked about the bid team's tactics, from the personal lobbying of individual committee members to this week's undignified attack on BBC's Panorama programme, which alleged that three of the executive committee members took bribes. All the issues that spiked controversy will return, principally whether the country, its prime minister and football custodians, should have kowtowed so completely to Fifa.

The media

The messengers will come under attack, too. Throughout, the bid team has apparently accepted that Fifa's decision-makers could reject England's bid because a small part of our free press has taken an investigative view of Fifa, not just cheered the bid along. The bid team may seek to lay at least part of the blame on Panorama and the Sunday Times for their investigations into alleged corruption at the heart of Fifa. Both can be expected to stand by their journalism and, in Panorama's case, the timing of the programme, whose merits – making serious allegations of corruption – may become more appreciated over time.

Reform of the FA

English football will return to the inward-looking process suspended by all in an agreed ceasefire, contemplating its structure and politics, and need for reform. Attention will focus on the FA, rudderless since Triesman was felled, seeking a permanent chairman and some authority to govern the game. Issues will include the FA's independence from the all-powerful Premier League, the league's governance including the relentless sale of clubs to a mishmash of overseas interests, a failure to develop young players for a successful national team, ticket prices, as well as the quality of the game's, and the government's, approach to football's grass roots.

Reform of Fifa

The bidding process, whatever the outcome, has exposed the shortcomings of world football's governing body, and its lack of a modern culture of transparency, more than ever before. Two executive committee members, Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii, are suspended from voting having been exposed in a basic undercover sting by the Sunday Times. Panorama's allegations, that $100m of bribes have been paid to Fifa members, including the three named, cannot be waved away and left unanswered for ever.

When next?

Cruelly for the generation not born at the time or not old enough in 1966 to bask in Alf Ramsey and his team's triumph, failure will mean England cannot host a World Cup until 2030 at the earliest. If the FA was to bid for it, and if successful finally, it would be 64 years since England hosted its last one – truly a lifetime.

• This article was amended on 2 December 2010. The original said "Critical questions will be asked about the bid team's tactics, from the personal lobbying of individual committee members to this week's undignified attack by BBC's Panorama programme". This has been corrected.